


Bitter punchline

by sweetvillain



Category: Rusty Quill Gaming (Podcast)
Genre: Angst, Gen, Hopeful Ending, M/M, Temporary Character Death
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-14
Updated: 2020-10-14
Packaged: 2021-03-08 18:54:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 614
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27011572
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sweetvillain/pseuds/sweetvillain
Summary: It's a cleric's job to lay out the dead.(Warning for RQG 174, ALL THE SPOILERS. Posting fanfic is cheaper than therapy.)
Relationships: Zolf Smith & Oscar Wilde, Zolf Smith/Oscar Wilde
Comments: 8
Kudos: 47





	Bitter punchline

**Author's Note:**

> RQG 174 left me emotionally devastated. This is just my brain spooling out some of that trauma. I sincerely hope reading it doesn't make anyone feel worse. It's actually supposed to help a little? I'm trying to stay hopeful through the Halloween hiatus, I hope you all are too. (It's okay, we've got loads of hope.)
> 
> Title hastily yoinked from Not A Job by Elbow.

Zolf went through the motions of laying out the dead almost brusquely. Moving the bodies, closing their eyes, determinedly not pausing to look at Wilde. The errant locks of hair that begged to be gently brushed off his forehead. The blood that speckled his lips so brightly against the pale glow of the snow.

Zolf knew he had done his absolute best at trying to land the ship safely. His best had not been good enough. And now the dead were laid out neatly in a row, covered with spare pieces of canvas like so much refuse. Nothing he could do about it. Nothing would bring them back. He wasn't strong enough.

Zolf finished setting up crates and more canvas in a roughshod attempt to hide the dead from view. The rest of the crew didn't need the distress of seeing them right now. Zolf could have used some of that not-seeing too. He had tried not to look too long. And he had failed, of course he had failed.

The kobolds, so small and frail in death, almost weightless when he had carried them out of the snow, into the meagre shelter the ship's broken hull offered from the wind.

Carter who had never been still for a moment in his life. His broken and mangled body was easier to accept than his silence.

And then - and then.

The bloody idiot. He could learn to fly an airship, just like that, but not to follow basic safety protocol. It was his own damn fault, and how dare he - 

The mission came first. They signed up for this. The mission. They signed up - _the mission_ \- fuck, what was even the point anymore? Sure, they were all prepared to go out with a bang if it helped save the world but this wasn't it. This was an accident. Just another senseless, cruel coincidence in a seemingly endless cascade of horrors they'd had to endure. Wilde had certainly seen his share and gods knew where he had kept pulling all that extra resilience from. How could he possibly have come so far only for it to end like this?

Hoping against hope was Zolf's whole shtick now, but he couldn't help but wonder how many blows it would take to beat it out of him for good.

Zolf couldn't stay and stand vigil. There was no time now, and if there had been he would simply have broken down and become even more useless than he already was.

As it turned out he didn't have to find much busywork to distract himself. He had barely begun to organize campfires and shelter when Azu lead a devastated but thankfully now non-firebreathing Hamid back into the clearing.

The frankly excessively massive eagle followed only moments after. And before Zolf had even had time to think about reaching for his glaive, the problem solved itself - or rather herself, when the bird became a human woman. The universe had a weird sense of humour but sure, this was one way to keep them all busy for a while.

Cel had been so frantic and yet somehow diminished, teetering on the edge of something Zolf could easily recognise but had no business asking about. Now they stopped ricocheting between Barnes, the kobolds and Earhart in order to talk to the bird lady, visibly regaining some of their posture and momentum. When they called out with the news Zolf could almost see the flare of hope burst to life within his crewmates.

Hope could be a spiteful thing, deluded and damaging, but it was _his_ thing. He was already reaching for it, recklessly, and it came so much easier than the glaive.


End file.
